Fruits of the Spirit: Peace

You know, about a year ago, I gave a sermon where I talked about how everybody you talk to, in the church, out of the church, feels like the world is coming apart. And there's something wrong in society. You know, you go and get your hair cut, and the people are talking about how unsettled things are. Well, we moved over the last year to a point where it seems like the whole world is in conflict. I mean, all over the world, everything's on the brink of wars. And of course, inside the United States, it's just open conflict. People can't fix their problems.

And it's getting worse and worse and worse. Violence is breaking out all over the United States. I was talking to Mr. Smith. Mark Smith's out here today. They had to go to Knoxville. But he was saying that he, of course, teaches middle school. He said it's the strangest thing. He's never seen anything like it. In middle school, the last couple months, the class is sometimes a large part of the class that's sitting on one side of the room and on the other side of the room, all the kids that are just in the middle are having fun. But the class is literally polarized by people who voted for Mrs. Clinton and people who voted for Mr. Trump, and they won't even talk to each other. Now, we're talking about 12-year-olds. They won't even talk to each other.

So, Paul and I. We live in a very conflicted place, and this world is going to get more and more conflicted, and it's going to become more and more violent. Of course, we've looked at some prophecies the last few months about how that's predicted to happen. The Old Testament talks about how when the Messiah comes, when Jesus Christ comes, He is the Prince of Peace. Every year at the Feast of Tabernacles, we celebrate that that's going to be a time of peace. Christ is going to be ring, or the earth, the kingdom of God is going to be on earth, and it's going to be a time of peace. He is the Prince of Peace.

You and I live in this paradox. You and I are supposed to be learning peace in a violent world while fighting a spiritual warfare. Think about this, the paradox of that. Some people look at the Bible and they say it's just too full of paradoxes to be true. Well, let's see. People were supposed to be learning peace while fighting a spiritual warfare while living in a violent world. Well, there's our calling. Learning peace. In fact, in the Sermon that mounts, Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the peacemakers. They are blessed by God. For they shall be called the sons of God. If we want to truly be the children of God, we must be peacemakers. How can we be peacemakers when our lives are just filled with nothing but conflict? We've been going through the last couple of months the fruits of the Spirit. As I've said before, as we learn God's laws, we learn God's way, we begin to keep those laws, and we begin to obey God, and we begin to do the things God wants us to do. That is part of the conversion process, but it's only part of the conversion process. Obedience to God is to lead us to the fruits of the Spirit. We can keep the law of not steal and still only be half converted because the fruits of the Spirit are supposed to be produced in our lives. Our obedience to God, our relationship with God is supposed to produce these fruits. Let's go to Galatians 5 just to recap what we've covered so far. It's going to be a series of sermons. Galatians 5, verse 23, because we've been working backwards through this list. We started with the one that's last on the list, and we're working through them. The first one is self-control in verse 23. It's actually the last part of the verse. Self-control. So we have to learn to have control. We have to learn obedience. We have to learn to tame our desires and our will, what we want to do. We've been gentleness. We talked about that. Faithfulness. It's not just faith, but faithfulness. We must remain faithful to God. Goodness. Kindness. Kindness is part of the fruits of God's Spirit. If God is living in us through His Spirit, these things, these attributes, these qualities will be produced in us. And that's why it's so much easier sometimes to talk about doctrine, because it's exact. You know, I can go show you the resurrection and go through the Scriptures and the resurrections and nail that down. Or that you don't have an immortal soul. I can nail that down.

But this is very complicated to learn self-control and gentleness and faithfulness and goodness and kindness and long suffering. And I went through that one last time and said, I really don't like that one because I like short suffering. In fact, I like no suffering at all, but because I realize, okay, God requires some suffering. I just want short suffering because I have to.

And after long suffering, we come to peace.

Peace. It's the one thing that when you talk to people, most people do not have in life. They don't have peace. They find peace through a little bit of entertainment or in their work. Or, you know, they do something for a short amount of time that gives them a sense of peace, but they really don't have peace. And for us in the Church of God, many times, peace is what we lack. You know, the sermon was about depression and discouragement. Once again, that's an emotional state. It's a whole lot easier to talk about other things. But if we're going to grow in truth and knowledge, we also have to realize these things, the way of God eventually affects not only the mind, but it affects the emotions and affects the motivations. Peace is what God wants to do with us and in us. This is a very complicated subject. We won't be able to touch on it today. The idea that God wants to make peace with you, because remember it talks about how before God calls us, we are His enemies. So God wishes to make peace with us while we are His enemies.

And so this process of being converted is being made having a peace between us and God, where we were enemies and we're not, where we become children. And how does that now translate into the internal aspects of our lives? The peace produced by God's Spirit is more than the absence of conflict. In fact, you're going to live in a conflicted world. The spiritual fruit of peace is a spiritual and emotional state of mind that guides how we react to the external situation. Let me repeat that. Spiritual fruit of peace is a spiritual and emotional state of mind that guides how we act to external situations.

Because you're not going to get out of all this conflict, at work, with your neighbors, sometimes with your spouses, with your family members. It's what we do with it, and it must be driven by internal peace that comes from God. An internal peace that comes because of our relationship with God and is a product of our relationship with God. We're not just talking about peace the way human beings can feel peaceful. We're talking about peace as a fruit of God's Spirit. And as we've gone through each of these fruits, we've seen that as human beings, we can accomplish some of these fruits in sort of a just a surface way. Hey, there are some people that don't even believe in God and have great self-control, but not in the way this is talking about. This is talking about self-control in relationship to the teachings and law of God. So how do we have this kind of spiritual peace? You look at John 14. It's John chapter 14. This isn't just some techniques. In fact, I'm going to try to talk about some very simple things and some very, you know, at least one complicated issue we'll touch on today. It would take three sermons to really cover this.

As we go through each of the fruits of the Spirit, they actually get more complicated.

The last three will last four. Long-suffering, peace, joy, and love are incredibly complicated.

For one thing, we have to sort through our emotional, human definition of these things. And this is not what God is defining as differently than we do. Okay, peace is everybody's things my way. That there's peace.

Well, that's not exactly God's definition of what peace is. John 14, verse 27, Jesus Christ says, Peace I leave with you. He says, this is what He says, said to His disciples on that Passover night. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

He says, the peace I'm going to give to you is going to help you with your troubles and your fears.

The peace that comes from God will help us with our troubles and our fears. Now, it seems that we would just naturally say, oh good, I want God's peace. But you know, the funny thing about this is because we have corrupted human nature, we actually resist what we have to do to have the peace of God. We naturally resist it.

So we actually fight against the very thing that can give us peace on a spiritual level.

Think about it. When Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace returns, what happens? Huge armies form to try to fight Him. Humanity won't see what He's bringing us peace.

We have God's Spirit. And many times we resist God's Spirit because we don't understand what God is doing. We're actually resisting what He's doing in our hearts.

So it seems like this would be natural, but it's not. This is part of the point James was making in James 4. This is a very common passage. A very common passage. Probably you have part of it memorized. But James 4, because in the book of James, he's writing to the Church. This is one of the general epistles or general letters. James is writing to the Church at large, unlike Paul, who's usually writing to a specific person or a specific congregation. Colossians, the Church of Colossae, or the Church in Ephesus. James is written to the Church at large. And he's talking about issues that are affecting, at that time, the Church all over the place.

Not just the one of hell.

And he says in verse 1 in chapter 4, Where do wars and fights come from among you?

Why is there conflict even in the Church?

Why is there conflict in families in the Church? In husbands and wives in the Church? Why do we have conflict? We're all dealing with conflict all the time. At our place of business.

And our neighbors. Why is there such conflict? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? In yourselves?

In other words, the warfare is inside of us. We keep thinking, if we just come up with the right policies, we could stop.

You know, this is common in the United States. We could stop what's happening, say, in North Korea or China. Or the streets of Chicago. The problem is, you either enforce peace by violence, by force, or you have to change the nature of human beings.

So it's either enforced by force, by other violence, or you change the nature of human beings.

And that's why, no matter what solutions that human beings come up with, they're only temporary. They may have some little bit good effect, but they're only temporary. Because until you change human nature, we will not see the peace of God.

Because we want what we want.

And every individual wants what we want.

He says, you murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. In other words, we don't receive what we want because we don't ask God. He says, okay, well, I'll just go ask God for everything I want. I'll get everything I want. Well, the rest of the sentence is, you ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures. In other words, even when we go to God, we have wrong motivations. This gets into motivations. What the Bible calls our heart. And this is why we can be converted in the mind and not converted in the heart. We can know the truth and not be really, internally, any different than our neighbor. So, the truth that God gives us has to translate with God's Spirit into the fruits of the Spirit. That this is what begins to be in the course of our lifetimes. This is what begins to be produced in our lives. This is what begins to be produced in us. He says, adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know? Now, listen to this statement. Because this has to do with peace. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. You and I cannot have peace until we give up the values of the world. You and I will never find peace until we give up the values of the world.

And those values, we've accepted at levels sometimes we can't even, we don't even recognize.

So that we become caught up in the status, or the money, or the size of the house, or whatever. That is the statute, that are the values and the status symbols of the world around us. And then we can't find peace. We can't find peace because those things cannot bring us peace. And they make us the enemy of God. Now, once again, it's not wrong to have a nice house. It's not wrong to, you know, have nice clothes. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that when that becomes our measurement of peace, there's a problem with it.

Because that measurement, you have peace with your house until you find a crack in your foundation. Right? Now, you're no longer at peace with your house.

You're no longer at peace with your house.

We were almost like the services today because we were suffering a definite lack of peace. Because we had a lot of lightning last night, and Kim came in and said, right before we get ready to leave, she said, Gary, the freezer is shut off. And someone had just given us a deer, and that whole freezer is full of food. You almost got free food today. We had to load it up and bring it over and just give it away. And we tried everything imaginable, you know, the circuit breakers that... Then I forgot the little, you know, reset button on the plug. Yeah. We got it fixed. So sorry, I do not get any...

But see, our lives constantly bring stress and anxieties and fears into us so that we lose our peace. We lose it. We lose our peace. But we can constantly be re-centered, but it has to be a spiritual re-centering. It has to be a spiritual re-centering. Look at Isaiah 57.

Isaiah 57. The more we look at these external things to give us peace, the more desperate we become. Isaiah 57. Let's start a verse. We're going to break in the middle of a thought here. But verse 19. This is God speaking. He says, I create the fruit of the lips, peace. Peace to Him who is afar off, and to Him who is near, says the Lord. He wants peace. That peace begins with each one of us as an individual. God wants to make peace with you. That's, you know, it talks about how He made peace through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Because without that, you and I can't even approach the great God. We have no right to come before God. Except He's forgiven us of our sins. So He's made peace with us at a great personal sacrifice, at a great personal pain and suffering on the part of Jesus Christ. So that peace can be made with His enemies. So He takes us as enemies and He makes this peace and He says, come, peace to you. Peace, come, let's have peace. He says to the Lord, but notice the last part of this verse, and I will heal Him. Like all the other fruits of the Spirit, it takes spiritual healing for this to take place. You and I are damaged. Our human nature is so corrupt that it takes God healing us, healing our nature, healing our emotions, healing the way we think, because we're so dysfunctional, so that peace can happen. God says, I want to make peace, and I have to actually heal you spiritually so that you can have peace. That's why Christ's sacrifice wasn't just for our physical healing, it was for our physical healing. But it's also for our spiritual healing and our emotional healing.

So we have to be healed so peace can take place. He says, but the wicked, those who will not respond to God, but the wicked are like troubled seas when it cannot rest, whose water casts up mire and dirt. You know, if you've seen a storm on the coast, you know, when a hurricane comes in, like on the Gulf of Mexico, and the water turns a different color because it's brown by the shore, because it's just churning up everything that's on the bottom.

And everything, you can't even get out of the water, of course, because the water, it would just kill you. The waves coming in, and the crashing of the waves, and the undertow. He says, that's what a life of a wicked person is like internally.

He says, there is no peace, says the Lord for the wicked. Oh, they might find peace for a little bit in some new gadget they bought, or some new car, or some party where they drink too much. And they feel peace for a little bit. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change anything. The way He's talking about it, He's talking about peace between us and Him that creates peace in us in this conflicted world. It gives us the ability to deal with the conflicts that we're in all the time. So let's talk about some principles of peace. Principles for living peaceably. This first one seems simple. It seems simple, but it's not. The first thing we have to do is we have to seek God's peace. We have to seek peace with God and the peace that He gives us. And there's a couple things you can do every day to do that. The first one is so simple, you've heard it a hundred times, and yet we forget to do it.

Take some time every day, a half hour, forty-five minutes, an hour, whatever you can take. But it can't be five minutes.

And you go to God. Shut off the TV, shut off the radio, turn off the computer, don't answer an email.

And go spend time with God, seeking His peace through prayer and through Bible study. I'll tell you, okay, I've heard that before. What's the secret? There is no secret. The peace comes from God. So if we don't connect to God, we can't receive it. It's like running electricity, but not having any wires. Right? I build a house, have no wiring in it because I think the electricity is just going to sort of flow through the air and come into my house. It doesn't work that way. If you're not plugged in, you don't get electricity. If we're not relating with God, we don't receive the help. Philippians 4. Philippians 4.

In the sermonette, part of this chapter was read, but I'm going to read a different part. Verse 6 says, Be anxious for nothing. Oh, well, yeah, try that. All of us suffer anxiety. Right? So what he's saying is, okay, you're going to have to learn to deal with your anxieties. And here's how you deal with your anxieties. It has to do with the peace of God. But in everything, by what? By prayer. How do we deal with our anxieties? First of all, it's by prayer and supplication to God. It's going to God and pouring out your anxieties. Tonight at the Teen Bible study, we're going to talk about worry a little bit. Worry. Sort of tied into the sermon stuff. How do we worry about it? Why do we worry? How do we deal with worry? About my test. About, you know, whether that guy likes it or not. About all the things we worry about. Do you ever try to sleep at night and you're worried? So then you're worried about you're not getting any sleep? And then you're worried because you're worried about not sleeping? Pretty soon you're just like a, you know, wading maniac. You might as well just get up because you're tossing and turning and worried about, I'm not getting any sleep! Well, of course you're not, because you know. So this is what we do. So how do we deal with this? He says, be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Now this is interesting. We bring our anxieties to God first by thanking Him for what He's given to us. By thanking God for what we do have, it begins to ratchet down our anxieties. When we begin to look at, and I was brought out to the sermon there, what's good? Because I can tell you, everything in life is bad if you just look at it on the sermon. What is God doing? What is God doing in my life? What do I have that is good? What is His blessing? See, we're going to God. And we bring this to God. And with thanksgiving, so we're going to over with our supplication. So, God, I need your help. First, let me thank you for what I have. And we're dealing with our anxieties. Let your requests take our problems to God. Let your requests be made known to God. Notice what it says. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Verse 6 and 7 is remarkable. Okay, take your anxieties and your problems and take them to God. And start by being thankful for what He has done. Sometimes it's just, God, thank You for letting me come talk to You. That's all you can get out. But, because this is too much, and I have nothing to be thankful right now, I am a crisis. And you go and you pour it out. And He says, and the peace of God. And here's the thing that's very interesting here, which surpasses all understanding.

You know, when I counsel people for anxiety, or discouragement, depression, different things, I say, yeah, we've all gone through it at one point or another. Different degrees, we've all gone through this. And we can talk about things we can do that are common sense things to do to help control that, help deal with it. But there is something that happens when we are connected with God. A peace that surpasses all understanding.

And some of you know exactly what that is. Because if you haven't been there yet, you will be. There's some point where you can't do anything to break through what's happening to you. And you pray, and you pray, and you pray, and you think all is lost. And you study the Scripture, and you just can't find anything. And you're crying out to God, and you're saying, you must give me what I cannot have. And at some point in that crisis, there's a peace.

And you can't understand it. You don't know where it came from. Well, you know where it came from. He came from God. He didn't necessarily fix the problem. And you face another crisis the next day, maybe. But there is this moment. You're okay. That's God.

Read verses 6 and 7. Post that. Keep that in your mind. And go ask God to do that in the times when you cannot do it yourself. See, we think we can do this ourselves, and every Christian will face at some point. If you have it, you probably just haven't lived longer. You will face some point, a crisis so great that your faith is gone, and this is all you have.

And what you have is God's peace. God's reassurance, God's power that comes into us. We're trying to do this our own too much. So are we fails so much. We're trying to do it our own. That's why it's prayer and the Scripture. It's verses 6 and 7 that has helped me on many occasions.

Because I prayed this, and God has helped me through it.

So we have to go to the Scripture. Look at Hebrews 13. So we seek the peace of God. It's through prayer, and it's through in this book. There's times it's through fasting. And we ignore many times the great importance of fasting in our lives. Hebrews 13 verse 20.

Now may the God of peace, this is a benediction, this is a blessing that the writer of Hebrews is giving on the people who are reading his book. And he said this to this one. So think of this writing it, probably Paul, he's writing it as a blessing. He wants the readers at the end to feel that it's like a prayer that God, he's praying that God give him a blessing. Now may the God of peace, who brought up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, the great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do his will, working in you what is well pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, in whom he glory forever and ever. The God of peace works in us because the thing that made us enemies, our sins, have been forgiven through Jesus Christ.

There's a peace now. You don't have peace with an enemy, do you? He's your enemy.

If he's your enemy, you cannot have peace. The reason you and I have peace with God isn't because one day we woke up so good that God said, Wow, that's such a good person. I'm going to go make peace with that person. Or you and I didn't go make peace with God. Hey, God, I'd like to make peace with you here. Can we negotiate?

Our relationship with God is only because he made peace with us through Christ. That's it! Now, we're supposed to obey and follow and keep the commandments and all these other things that we're supposed to do, but that's part of what we're supposed to do. We're not the ones who made the peace. We're the ones who are responding to the peace.

We're the ones responding to the peace. And this book teaches us peace. It teaches us the peace of God.

So that His power can create it as something we do not have.

Most people struggle with peace almost every day at some point. Right? So we did. We struggled. Just like we struggled with long suffering and kindness and goodness and gentleness and self-control. We suffer with all these things every day.

And we have to have time every day to get plugged into God so that this peace can come to us. Then you can be in a situation to say, God, please help me here, and you can have peace.

So much of the time, by the time we think, God, please help me, we're already in the war. Right? Up. I punch the guy. He's down. He's getting up. He's bigger than me. God, please help me. Okay? It's a little late. The conflict has already reached a very bad stage. Right?

Seek God's peace. Seek it daily. Also, then, learn to avoid unnecessary conflict. Because of pride much of the time, we will get embroiled in conflicts that are absolutely not necessary. Now, some conflicts aren't necessary. In the world you and I live in, some confrontation is absolutely necessary. We talked about that in One of the Fruits, remember? Where we have to be the goodness. We have to stand for goodness, even at personal price. We have to stand for God, even at times when nobody else is standing for God.

So there's a price we pay for that goodness, which is one of the fruits of the Spirit. But we don't have to go around doing it all the time. We do it when God wants us to. And there's so much needless conflict we go through because of our own pride. And this is a very complicated issue that we can spend the whole sermon on.

I have a really...one of my favorite passages on this is in Genesis 26. Isaac goes out and he has wells that Abraham and Doug... Now, remember, these are nomadic tribes, and then little villages and cities are springing up. And some people say, you know what? And they would share these wells. No, those are our wells. Now, Isaac was in charge of a tribe. Remember, Abraham had hundreds of servants, armed servants. There were soldiers that fought for him. So, I mean, this tribe is huge. It may be a thousand people, or a couple of thousand people. But children and everything. And Isaac's in charge of the tribe. And they're going to take his family wells. Now, the problem is, when a tribe fights another tribe in the Middle East, it's called a blood feud. They fight forever. They've been fighting forever over there now. The sons of Abraham have been fighting for four thousand years. And the sons of Esau, and the sons of Jacob...

They've been fighting for all these years. Isaac saw what could happen. And Isaac walked away. And he built other wells. And he built other wells. And another tribe came along. After he dug the wells, there was water and said, We want those wells.

Now, he could have called on God and said, God, help me slay my enemies. And God probably would have helped him slay his enemies. Here were his wells.

Isaac decided, this one is not worth it. And he went another place and dug wells. And thanked God for his wells. But why is that story in there? Isaac wasn't a man who would just run away in fear. And because Isaac was analyzing, is this conflict worth it or not? How many people will die here when I'll just go make another well? Isaac is a very humble man. Isaac is very fascinating of the patriarchs, because basically everything that's said about him is good.

Abraham's faults are shown and Jacob's faults are shown. But Isaac was very wise men.

And he decided, in this case, it's not worth it.

The bloodshed that would go on for generations isn't worth it. I'll simply dig another well.

And God blessed him. There are times when we will fight conflict, we don't have to fight. And it will get lodged in our minds, so we have this anger and this angst. And we relive what somebody's done to us over and over again.

So we live in constant conflict. How many times are you emotionally distraught over what someone did to you ten years ago? And it's still there.

Which leads us to our third point, which is another huge point, and I can only touch on today. And that is, we all have to learn to forgive.

I will give a sermon, actually it will take more than one, on forgiveness. Here sometime in the future, but forgiveness is not reconciliation. Those are two different things we have to understand the difference.

But forgiveness is giving up the need to be absorbed with the emotional pain that happened.

And wanting that person either to repent or be punished or something. I'll never forget counseling a man one time who had been terribly hurt by someone who meant a lot to him. This was years and years ago. But the man died. And the person who was hurt said, I can't fix it. I can't ever get him to say he's sorry, because he died.

And he was eaten alive by it. He says, it's like the man's in the grave reaching up and grabbing me every day.

I've talked to people whose parents were abusive, and then the parents die. And now they're 50 years old and they're consumed with the pain of my parents, instead of forgiving. And it's so hard.

The more I learn about forgiveness, I've had to go back and forgive people who did damage to me years ago. I don't even know who they are or where they are anymore. I've had to forgive them anyway.

Because I can't let them control my life. Because God controls my life, not somebody who did something stupid to me 20 years ago.

That's a hard lesson to learn. I've got to go forgive somebody who did something to me all their years ago.

Or you carried around, right? We carried around these scars. How much more of this has to be between us and our own families and in the Church. We have to forgive. Then we can work towards reconciliation, which is a different issue. But you'll never reconcile without forgiveness. You can't. And the proof of that is God forgave us before we reconcile with God. We reconciled with God when we were baptized, sins were washed away, and we received His Holy Spirit. We are now reconciled with God. Right? What led us to baptism? The fact that He had already forgiven us.

But we won't reconcile until we repent it. It takes both parties to reconcile. But forgiveness is commanded, whether the person reconciles or not. In other words, there are people that you forgive but you can't have a relationship with. You know, there are people that God wants to forgive, and He'll throw it away from you.

And Christ died for them.

Christ died for the people thrown in a lake fire.

Because He said He died for everybody. But the reconciliation can't take place because the other person won't respond. So this is a very, very complicated subject about forgiveness. But we have to give up all these things we carry with us all the time. Look at what Paul says in Colossians 3. Here he's talking about inside the church. The place you start is with your family.

Sometimes it's easier to forgive somebody you don't know. Ah, the person's just an idiot who cares, right?

Someone tries to drive you off the road just screaming and hollering and shaking their fists at you. You're upset for a couple of minutes and you think, I'm just an idiot who cares. And you forgive him. But we don't forgive our own kids. Or we don't forgive our own husband or our own wife. Or things that sometimes are just as meaningless.

And then we don't forgive each other at the church. Colossians 3, verse 12. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, this is us, the elect of God, the people of God. Put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against one another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. Now, I read this when we went through one of the other fruits. But I want to read a little farther in the passage. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bottom of perfection, in verse 15.

So now we've got to finish the thought. We didn't finish the thought lesson. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful. And let the word of Christ dwell in all you richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace, and let your hearts, in your hearts to the Lord. Now think about what He just said. We are able to forgive one another because the peace of God is in us.

This is hard. This is where Christianity gets really, really, really tough. This makes paying your tithes look easy. It's hard to pay my tithes because it's financially difficult for me to pay my tithes. That's child's play compared to the fruits of the Holy Spirit. That's why you do the tithing first. God takes us through the commandments to begin with. He takes us through those things to begin with because those are actually the easy things. We're thinking of the hard things. Now we're into the hard stuff. You only do this because the peace of God is in you.

If you don't have the peace of God in you, you can't do it. So we have to be pursuing the peace of God. And doing so, we learn to forgive others. We begin to experience peace inside ourselves. You say, but yeah, but they did something bad to me. Yes. Sure. And we're not denying that they did something bad. What you're saying is that emotionally I give up all that hurt and anger and pain and angst.

And maybe God will have that person repented. Maybe God will have that person repented. You know, if you don't forgive, what happens if the person repents? What if someone does something terrible to you? What if someone lied about you and cost you your job and you went through nine months of absolute poverty? And what they did was horrible. And they received all kinds of blessings and it appears worth it.

They got all kinds of money and status. It's horrible. And so you spend the next five years every day consumed with what that person did. And then one day they show up at church. What do you do? Walk up and say, get out of here. You're not welcome here. But I'm sorry what I did was wrong. Yeah, until you pay me back what I went through, there's no forgiveness.

And imagine Jesus Christ saying, until you pay me back, there's no forgiveness. That's it. Do you want to hear that something? Until you pay me back for everything you did to me, there's no forgiveness. So then we have to turn around and do that. Now, once again, that person doesn't repent. I read a great story one time that helped me understand this concept.

A man had been lied to. This was a true story. He had been lied about him and he ended up in prison. He was in South America. He ended up in prison. He lost his job. He got like a 30-year sentence. And they let him out in a couple of years, which was unusual. He felt like God let him out. He prayed about it. And then he read the script, because in the prison he read scriptures. I got to forgive that man.

So he drove, he got out of prison, he drove into the village where this guy was now like a drug lord. A very dangerous man. Drove there, went up to the door, knocked on the door. Now, everybody in the village had watched this. So everybody's arming themselves. They could be a big shootout or something. He goes, knocks on the door. The guy opens the door. You know, just shocked to see there. He says, I've just come to tell you that I prayed about it and I forgive you for what you did to me.

And he said, the man said, oh, well, that's nice. Why don't you come in and let's have some heat, you know? He said, no. Go back to this car and drove away. He was not required to reconcile with a drug dealer. He was only required to forgive him for what he did to him. Did you see the difference? He was only required to forgive him. He says, I got in the car and drove home and I was, no, I had peace. He had peace because he forgave. The other man doesn't have any peace because he hasn't repented yet. There's nobody to reconcile. We have to forgive or we'll never have peace.

But if we forgive, the guy doesn't get what's coming to him. None of us get what's coming to us. This is really hard when it's... We did one of our programs on this. Go on the Internet, go on YouTube and watch this program. It's a man who's in the United Church of God. His daughter was involved in drugs and a lot of just bad things. She ended up being brutally murdered.

At the trial, and we pieced together, we had police reports, we put the whole story together, including pictures of the trial and everything. At the trial, he went to the man who had killed his daughter, and he didn't give him the death penalty. And he walked up to him and said, God's given you a second chance. Take it. God's given you a chance to live. Take it. Turn to God. Now, did he believe the man should go to jail? Yes. Did he believe the man had committed a horrible sin against God and against him and against his daughter? Yes. But to me, it's not consumed with hatred. He has peace. Why does he have peace?

Because if the man doesn't repent, he's going to go to like a fire. If he does repent, then he'll accept him as a brother. Not in his life. Okay? But in the next one. He's not required to go be best friends with this guy, even if he repents. But he is required to reconcile enough. Has to.

David killed Uriah. If Uriah won't forgive him, he won't be in the kingdom. He can't be. Because he'll be consumed with hatred. David's going to be in the kingdom. Because God tells him. And David's the one who committed the crime. That's a hard one, isn't it? See, we're in the heart of stuff now. We're in the real... This is where Christianity not becomes just what we do. But it is the heart. It is who we are. This is where it becomes us. This is tough. We'll never have peace if we don't forgive. We can't have peace if we don't forgive. This peace isn't passive. This kind of peace is active. We are actively trying to be peacemakers. 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 3. Verse 12.

Let's go for saints so we get the full context here. Finally, he says to the church, All of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another. Love is brothers. Be tender-hearted. Be courteous. Not returning evil for evil. This is all part of the fruits of the Spirit. For reviling for reviling. But on the contrary, blessing. Knowing that you were called to this. What? We were called to this? Not responding with evil with evil. Reviling with reviling? Yep, we were called to this. That you may inherit a blessing. He quotes the Old Testament. For he would love life and see good days. Let him refrain his tongue from evil, his lips were speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. We sing this in one of our songs. On the Sabbath, we get, Let's seek peace and pursue it. They're nice words.

Let's seek peace and pursue it. We chase after it. In other words, it's not something you just sit and wait to do. We pursue it. We chase after peace. For the eyes of the Lord are unrighteous, and his ears are open to their prayers. For the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Now, there's sort of a last point I have to make here, then. We're going to talk about seeking the peace of God, avoiding unnecessary conflict, and learning to forgive. And learning to forgive is a huge concept. But do not confuse being a peacemaker with being able to solve every problem.

Because it takes more than one person to solve any problem.

Right? God, with all of his power, would not take away free will. He would, but he doesn't. You know what that means? Not everybody ends up at peace with God. That's what they're like a fire. It's for those who do not end up at peace with God.

They're evil. So God will not force peace on anyone. So neither can you and I.

I serve a peacemaker personality, so I like to make peace. I can kill myself sometimes, trying to make peace. Just chime myself nuts. My poor wife says, you can't do it anymore! Yes, I can!

Romans 12.

Verse 18. I love this little verse. It's sort of in the middle of a bunch of things Paul's writing about, and it just must have popped into his mind. You write these stuff down, you know? Sometimes Paul writes very logically, and sometimes it's almost like stream of thought. Oh yeah, this. And don't forget this. Oh yeah, remember this. And he's just writing all these things down. He says here, verse 18, If it is possible, which means it's not always possible, if it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men, do your part and realize, ah, you can't live in peace with everybody. It's not possible.

That doesn't mean you can't experience the peace of God. So we can have the peace of God in us, which helps us in the conflict. But you and I cannot live peaceably with everybody, because everybody has to be exactly on the same page with God. And you know what? Not everybody can live peaceably with you either. So think about that.

Right? Not everybody can live peaceably with you, because maybe, you know, your pride or your personality or whatever. So as much as it depends on you, he says, if it is all possible, if there is any way to do it, live peaceably with everybody as you can.

But being a peacemaker doesn't mean you simply compromise, or, you know, we get to the place where as a peacemaker, we just sort of go along with anything. How many of you have read Esau's famous? I love Esau's famous. Okay, a few of you. One of my favorites is about a man who married two women. And one was an old woman, and one was a young woman. And he wanted to please both of them. And the old one one day said, you know, my hair is getting gray.

And you have hardly any gray hair. So every day, she would pull out one of his dark hairs.

And the young woman one day said, you know what? You're starting to get gray. I see more and more gray. And of course, I'm young, and what you look young like me, so she started pulling out his gray hairs. And one day he woke up and was absolutely bald, and neither of them liked him. Now there's a point there, okay? When you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody.

When you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody. What we have to do is what is right. We have to do what is right before God, and treat everybody the way we're supposed to treat them, and realize we don't have the power to make peace with everybody, or in every situation. We only have the power to have the peace of God in us. And that's enough. That's enough. We can live with people who may have conflict with us, and it's okay.

You don't have to solve every problem, because you and I can't solve every problem. We don't have that kind of power. We just don't.

So we let God work in us every day.

There is a time for conflict.

The Bible talks about it when we talk about goodness. There's a time for confrontation. There's a time to stand up and say, No, we will not do this. No, God says this.

No, I will not work on this either. No, I think abortion is sin.

There's a time to make our stance.

And there's a time to realize that when it comes to personal conflict, you can't solve everything. But we are to have peace. The peace of God in us. And that allows us to have peace with others whenever people allow us to do so.

Real peace never will be achieved by any of us until our human interest change. You and I will be conflicted at some level until the resurrection.

We have times when we experience the peace of God, but we will be conflicted at certain levels until that point. Because of corrupt human nature.

But we are designed to have peace with God forever. And experience peace forever. That's what we're designed to be. That's what God is doing with us. But you and I have been called to become peaceful.

And to become peacemakers. But you and I can only be real peacemakers once the peace of God is in us. Because if you and I try to make peace without the peace of God in us, we will usually only make the situation worse.

And become more frustrated ourselves. More angry ourselves. More hurt ourselves. The strange truth is that the world will not experience peace until they fight a war with the Prince of Peace.

That's how corrupt human nature is.

And then God is going to establish His Kingdom on this earth. You and I have been called today not just to experience the peace of God.

And I want to leave you with this last thought. You and I have been called today so that we can be prepared by God's Spirit. So when Christ comes back to be changed, so that we help Him bring peace to the world.

We are being changed and taught in a world of conflict. In fighting our own spiritual battles of warfare. We are learning the peace of God so that someday we can help Christ bring real peace. Real peace between nations and tribes and peoples and families and individuals.

It's not just for you and I that we're learning this. It's to help actually be fellow peacemakers, as it says, blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be the sons of God.